


The perils of collecting Real Estate

by SaunteringVaguelyDownwards



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:16:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaunteringVaguelyDownwards/pseuds/SaunteringVaguelyDownwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames knows all the houses Arthur owns, he thinks.</p>
<p>(aka "let's talk about brass fixtures", which is much more accurate)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The perils of collecting Real Estate

**Author's Note:**

> When M prompted me with the immortal words "pudding! and IKEA!", I bet she didn't expect 2000 words of interior!porn. 
> 
> Also, Eames is a trolling troll and should not be taken seriously.

Eames knows all the houses Arthur owns, he thinks.

He knows the stylishly sparse renovated old build in Berlin, with its subtly closed-in balcony and no elevator, just vaguely Art Nouveau stairs that lead up to the second floor (counting it the proper, correct, European way, and whenever Arthur slips and thinks he has a third floor apartment, Eames is kind enough to correct him, at least four times a day, and the week after), overlooking the Landwehrkanal, because of course Arthur has that kind of money, being a mind thief and internationally wanted criminal. There is a tiny kitchen with a gas stove that dies whenever one tries to heat more than half a pot of coffee, peeling rose wallpaper from the 50s Arthur's been meaning to paint over for years, and a table that once belonged to the KGB and has slightly unsettling symbols scratched into the upper left corner.  
Arthur thinks it's shabby chic, Eames thinks Arthur might as well wear loafers with no socks and skinny jeans and be done with it. It is Berlin, after all, as he regularly assures him over lamb Döner and Weißbier, and if Arthur squints at him and tries to steal all the tomatoes from under his nose, he knows he's done a good job and will be dragged to the Mauerpark flea market at ungodly hours in retaliation to find yet another lampshade printed with disapproving owls. There are about twenty-five scattered across the apartment already, and two of them house very satisfied cacti.

Eames also knows the turquoise, pale yellow and dusty pink painted lady Arthur owns in San Francisco, and the bric-a-brac collection of chairs that make up the hall (“Who needs coat hangers? I have chairs.”), the kitchen (“I fell off this bar stool in a drunken stupor more than once. It's nostalgic.”), the dining room (“The table goes with none of them anyway. Makes for continuity, don't you think?”), the bathroom (“I need somewhere to put my clothes when I shower, what do _you_ do?”) the toilet (“I'm not buying a magazine rack when I have a very narrow folding chair.”), the study (“I'm not even continuing this discussion.”) and the living room (“This one's comfy, this one's my grandmothers' and this one's...well, I have no idea, but it _stays_.”). Eames once tried to sit on the rusty armchair out on the veranda and suffered a week of radio silence when it collapsed under him (“Heavy bones, I tell you. Heavy bones!”). He treads very carefully once he sets foot in San Francisco, and the only piece of furniture he dares to look at sideways these days is an Irish souvenir clock in the kitchen shaped like a mutilated sheep. But he does it very, very carefully.

Eames knows Arthur has a flat in Perth, but only goes there once a year to collect the mail directed to three different Mr. Smiths. Eames thinks that the CIA is too dumb to be real and Arthur has way too much money which could be spent on beach houses at the Côte d'Azur instead.

Eames knows about the cottage in Cornwall, mostly because it ended up being a makeshift hospital that time he found himself with a shot hip in Norway and Arthur had him flown in to Newquay Airport via private jet, and by then Eames recognized the logo on the airplane fin as the one Saito whined about really needing to change because it offended his sophisticated Japanese aesthetic sensibilities and why did all the American brands he bought out have to boast such butt-ugly logos and did these incompetent people not know how much it cost to change the entire corporate identity of an airline? Anyway, Eames spent most of his stay at Robin Nook, St. Agnes, Cornwall, staring at the pre-war oil lamps and the cracks in the plaster above him, two of which widened to a worrying degree in the first week. Arthur theorized that the damp was to blame, Eames leaned more towards the wooden beams that looked just about ready to collapse into a heap of tinsel.   
While Eames cured his hip, Arthur first attempted cooking a childhood favourite of Eames', ending up with pitch-black steak and kidney pudding that even Eames, growing up with the peculiarities of the British cuisine, refused to eat because he was on meds and who knew how that would react with this cancer-inducting goo not even the stray cats would sniff at. Arthur then spontaneously decided he needed some alone time and went fishing unsuccessfully. He did, however, bring shells from the beach which he started to glue to the rotting window frames in what Eames deeply hoped was boredom and not a misguided attempt at home improvement, but secretly suspected was the maritime version of the owl lampshades. Either way, as soon as Eames was able to walk again, he walked away, and didn't stop until Arthur caught up with him in Osaka and swore never to buy a house in a town with fewer than one million people again.

Eames knows about the minuscule one-room apartment Arthur keeps in Los Angeles with heavy curtains and a steel door and a cupboard with a single espresso cup, but four guns and two rifles, eight smoke bombs and more ammunition three men could carry. It is close to the highways and the airport, with perfect view of all the streets surrounding it, and three minutes by foot from the Cobbs' former home, Eames knows Arthur used it twice in his life, and the only reason he does not sell it is that he trusts only two people in the world, and neither of them is Dom Cobb. Eames isn't one of them either, but he nevertheless has a spare key which he treats as carefully as a small atomic bomb and as reverently as an engagement ring. An explosive one.

Eames knows the sprawling, ill-maintained villa Arthur owns in India, built around 1850 by a filthy rich con-man Brit not unlike Eames himself, surrounded by a thick jungle of overgrown once-houseplants and colourful weeds, hidden in the shade of a dark, imposing mountain range so high the clouds never release the ice covered peaks. The gaudy Victorian paint in the mouldy rooms was never renewed and the roof is one gigantic hole with the occasional tile and beam stuck through it. It smells of wet plants and rotten cedar and rodents make a noisy living in the hollow plaster. Behind the decaying monstrosity, however, there is a small servants' lodge, once built to house ten people in four rooms, now with expensive handmade rugs covering the walls and luxurious silk pouffes surrounding an open fireplace in the middle of the largest room. The rugs are family heirlooms Eames acquired in his very first theft, aged thirteen, from his uncle, who to this day eyes the black market in futile hopes, and he rearranges the seating every time because Arthur thinks the mahogany game table is for eating. It's the single place in the world where Arthur keeps only rupees and no credit cards, drinks tea, first flush from unknown local farmers, in bone china so fragile the light filters through, where he stares at the only picture his grandmother ever painted, in its prominent spot over the wrought iron bed, where there's no prize on neither his head or Eames', where he walks barefoot.

He knows the glass-walled high-rise estate in Phoenix, Arizona, and its post-modernist interior he is absolutely sure came with the apartment (because he's _seen_ Arthur build in dreams, and the man may have excellent taste in shirts but absolutely none in wall paints). He's been there twice, and is since convinced the air conditioning unit is indeed the cause for the USA’s rise to global superpower. Apart from that, it's terrifyingly black, beige and steel, and equipped with what has to be the world’s biggest fridge. Eames doesn't like it very much, and neither does Arthur. He keeps his VHS and betamax collection there, which Eames thinks is quite telling.

Eames spends a lot of time, with and without Arthur, in the lofty, open-plan, top-floor flat in Vienna, which neither Arthur nor Eames owns, but a man called Mr. Charles, who exists on three different pieces of paperwork and four official records, all of them concerned with hot water and fire insurance and petty little issues neither Arthur nor Eames have time and patience and credibility to deal with. But Arthur had the time and patience to dig through the EIUs _Global Liveability Report_ , and the _Mercer Quality of Living Survey_ and the Monocle's _Most Livable Cities Index_ because he is thorough and high-maintenance like that, and decided that Zurich is a bit too expensive and Melbourne is a bit too big, but Vienna passes the 'above one million' mark Eames had set and cultivates such a convoluted bureaucratic system Mr. Charles wouldn't ping on _any_ radar and is quaint enough to house truly promising flea markets.   
The historicist building with the tiled parquet floor is nestled in one of the many tiny backstreets close to the heart of the city, behind a church so old pigeon dynasties have developed elaborate feuds in its attic. It has a minuscule elevator wedged into a once-chimney and high ceilings with turn-of-the-century stucco and the understated luxury of having a near 360° view of the quirky skyline - a testament to the proud price the apartment fetched on the market.   
There is no cupboard in the kitchen, but a once-white rack Eames brought from his family home, where it used to hold bridles for stubborn inbred horses (“My mother thought it was mandatory with a surname this long.”). It now displays Chinese lacquered tea spoons and Augarten porcelain (“No. You do _not_ go to IKEA when you have Du-Paquier at your disposal.”) Opposite each other at the mosaic breakfast table are two No. 14 Thonet chairs the café around the corner sold after one hundred and ten years of use (“There is second hand chic, and there is antique, and there is a _difference_.”), positioned so the morning sun catches on the cracked tiles and the brilliant white wall Eames saved from certain death (“I don't care what the Vogue says about karmic balance, I'm not painting my kitchen mauve.”).   
Eames knows the path Arthur takes upon entering through the simple oak door, no extra locks and bolts and layers of steel, knows where he'll drop his bags and lock away the PASIV in the hidden compartment under the bed, and where he'll stop and glare at the new Hoffmann armchair by the western window, where his dreadful, moth-eaten, chequered monstrosity that tried to pass for a lounge chair used to be (“It is not _my_ fault you studied IT security and not Art History. It is, however, not _your_ fault you are American and therefore genetically unable to appreciate beautiful things smaller than a lorry, so I forgive you. This time.”)

Eames thinks that Arthur collects houses like poker chips because he grew up in a very modest beige row house on the edge of Nowhere, Suburbia, where the tree house was bigger than the kitchen, and stuffs all his estates with things _home &gardens_ and penniless student blogs tell him is chic because his neighbours thought a salmon sofa with a limegreen plastic table was the best the Eighties had to offer. Eames knows Arthur read the GQ magazine with a torchlight at sixteen and dreamt of Savile Row like other kids dream of Disneyland. And Eames does not understand, at all, how Arthur was able to develop a sense of fashion so informed to the point of being a walking, talking cliché where designer underwear is involved, but completely fail to colour-coordinate his wallpaper and sofa cushions or understand the stylistic importance of brass fixtures. But then, that's what he has Eames for, who only teases about the tacky teak couch table on his very mean days and allows him to rant about the colour of Eames’ socks, so Arthur is saved from any real harm that might be inherent to the citrus-palmtree-patterns he planned on using in the bedroom in San Francisco, which, honestly, is a blessing for everyone concerned and taught Eames the very valuable lesson to never let Arthur loose in a home improvement store, because while Arthur has very charming ideas about what makes a home, his improvements should be dealt with petrol and a match.


End file.
